How to replace your Singstar microphones

We are Singstar addicts. I’m not proud of it. It’s just a fact.

We love it, and it has become the family game of choice. The kids have worked out the exact drone you need to not actually sing but still win the game. Groover and I prefer the “sing your heart out approach”.

Funny to watch. To hear? Not so much.

But it came to pass that one of the microphones broke. A wire loose I suspect. Whatever. It wasn’t any fun to play when one of the mics wasn’t recording your singing properly.

So we decided to buy a replacement microphone.

Dead air is the term radio people use to describe the sound on the wireless when NOTHING is going to air.

Dead air is the term I’m using now to describe Sony’s response when we asked where we could get a replacement microphone. That’s right. If your microphone breaks – Sony expect you to buy another full game. $109.

So we decided to try and use the microphones from an old kareoke game we had. Problem. The input jack of the kareoke mic is 6 cm and the input of the little dongle thing from Singstar is 3.5 cm.

No worries, I thought, we’ll just go to Dick Smiths and get an adapter. Problem. Sony has cunningly made the hole just a little bit smaller than the adapter… and all the microphones for sale have this larger input jack.

I didn’t give up. No corporate giant is going to get the better of me! I went to my local guitar shop – Just Music – and they managed to find me a skinny 3.5 cm plug on a cord and a female-to-female plug which allowed me not only to fit my old mic to Singstar but also gave me a couple of metres extra cord so I could sing from my favourite couch on my lardy arse.

Totally love that.

So if your Singstar mic breaks – you can use any other microphone. Just pop down to your local guitar shop, take your Singstar USB dongle thingy with you so you can fit the new bits, and you can be singing as sweetly as me.

For a grand total of $17.

See the red plug? That’s the Singstar microphone plug. The trick is to find a skinny plug to fit into the Singstar dongle. You also need an adapter to fit a bigger plug – the one most other microphones use.